For two decades, Skype has been synonymous with calls on the computer; Today, Microsoft closes this service, without offering a real alternative. This is another more closed app by Microsoft as part of its change of direction and its total commitment to services based on AI as co -pilot; Although along the way, the company is ending some of its programs more loved by users.
Skype is one of those classic apps that had not been mentioning of mention for a while, but simply fulfilling its function: make calls. Specifically, the reason why Skype became popular in the 2000s was for his ability to make phone calls from the computerboth national and international. In the era prior to smartphones and video call apps, this was a very desired function, Skype did not miss competitors.
By the time Microsoft bought Skype for 8,500 million dollars in 2011, its star function was already losing importance, but that did not seem to import the company led by Steve Ballmer; Skype’s app was launched on Android And the rest of smartphones systems and expanded to support all kinds of communications, even competing with messaging apps such as WhatsApp and Snapchat. However, the renewal he received in 2017 was not enough to attract younger users, and their growth stagnated.
Even so, more than 40 million users use Skype daily, according to data from Enterprise apps today; Some users who are going to find that the app has stopped working. Microsoft intends that Skype users go to Microsoft Teamshis great commitment to communications with a great integration with Copilot’s AI, of course. However, there are two great inconveniences.
First of all, Microsoft Teams and Skype are not really comparable. Microsoft Teams remains a more designed app for professional environments than for casual users who simply want to call a family member sporadically. But above all, Microsoft Teams does not have phone call supportwhich is the main reason why Skype is still used today.
Even so, Microsoft really wants those millions of people to go to Teams, and therefore, it has facilitated the transition to Free Microsoft Teams: Skype chats and contacts are automatically transferred to Microsoft Teams. To do this, all we have to do is log in free Teams with our Skype account; It is not necessary to create a new Teams account.
If we do not want to use Microsoft Teams, we must bear in mind that Microsoft will erase our Skype data next January 2026; The data will be maintained on their servers only if we make the transition to Teams. The good news is that we can make a backup of our chats and files shared by Skype accessing the Official Skype export page. Once we make the application, we will have to wait a little until one or more Zip files that we can download are created.
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What if we have a payment subscription or do we have credits in Skype? Microsoft keeps calls in the Skype marking keyboard pagethat we can use while we are credited or while our subscription lasts. However, the purchases of subscriptions and credits are no longer available, so when they are run out, we will not be able to continue making calls by Skype and will be the final end of the service.
This page allows you to make calls, but has lost many of the functions. As of today, You can no longer send SMS messagesactivate call diversion, give Skype credit and configure the call identifier. Therefore, it is a limited version of Skype without most of its functions, which Microsoft has published only so that existing users can spend what they have bought.
